Fun on Four Legs

More years ago than we care to recall when we were newly married, we looked at our meagre finances and set the priorities. Our first purchases were, in order, a washing machine, a freezer and two Burmese kittens. It made sense to us and we have never had reason to regret the decision - well the freezer probably wasn't really a necessity.

For nearly thirty years we loved these cats and thought that no other breed could capture our hearts - until we discovered the Tonkinese. Closely related to the Burmese and similar in temperament we fell in love all over again. It had always been our intention to breed cats once we had the time and resources. We had imagined that we'd always breed Burmese but why make life easy? So we settled in East Anglia and started breeding Tonkinese cats.

The Tonkinese cat comes in many colours, each colour can be one of three coat patterns and each of these can be 'solid', tabby or tortie. The genetics can be alarmingly complicated for the novice. Serious students invest in a copy of Robinson's Genetics for Cat Breeders and Veterinarians. An 'alternative' and somewhat less weighty explanation can be seen here.

So what is a Tonkinese? Well they are an old breed which has been 'recreated' by enthusiasts. At the simplest level you may have heard that a first generation Tonkineseis created by mating a Siamese with a Burmese. This is only a partial truth for GCCF registered kittens. A modern first generation Tonkinese is the result of mating a Burmese with a Siamese that has only breed numbers 24/32 in the pedigree for at least the last five generations.